VII European Conference on Surface Crystallography and Dynamics

This special issue comprises most of the invited talks of the VII European Conference on Surface Crystallography and Dynamics (ECSCD-7) held during 26-29 August 2001 at Leiden (The Netherlands). Previous meetings of this series have taken place at La Grande Motte (France,1998), Banz (Germany, 1995), Aarhus (Denmark, 1993), San Miniato (Italy, 1991), Cambridge (England, 1988), and Erlangen (Germany, 1985). The conference focused on the atomic-scale crystallographic and dynamic properties of clean and adsorbate covered single-crystal surfaces including growing epitaxial films as well as the diffusion and self-assembly of deposits. The present frontiers of surface structure determination together with new direct methods as well as new types of structures, as chiral architectures, were described. Emphasis was also on the dynamics of surface defects, as kinks and steps, and on surface segregation in compounds. The nucleation, growth and morphological evolution of islands and thin films including the importance of surface stress were covered, too. For selected examples, surface structural properties were correlated to electronic properties and surface reactivity involving both experimental and theoretical work.

Professor Dr K Heinz